Ignorance: The Problem of Questioning & Understanding in the 21st Century Martin Heidegger wrote: “What is modern technology? It too is a revealing” (14). I propose we take those words and rearrange them to really capture what technology is in our contemporary culture: It is too revealing. And we allow it to be. Nothing has become everything, and everything has become nothing. Think about it this way: we see everything through the lens of the digital. We witness a gorgeous sunset and either say, “I wish I had my camera to take a photo” or “I’m glad my phone has a camera!” We don’t say: “I’m going to stand here and enjoy this sunset while it lasts, because I know I’ll really be experiencing this particular sunset in a way that allows me to truly cherish it.” The most trivial things have become the most important things to us. How many times have you received an email or a text message of a “funny” picture from a friend, that you know had to spend a lot of energy to come across said picture? What is it about that photo that makes it so sharable? Is it the (subjective) fact that it is hilarious, or the fact that they spent time and effort searching through similar photos before they came across one that justifies the use of their time and energy? To return to the idea of a sunset again, why is it that we never stop and really question why we consider nature “as a separate ‘other’ counterposed to” ourselves (Huws 33)? It isn’t like nature simply disappeared (that is an argument for a different time). Perhaps it is because nature is “mediated through multiple layers of technology” we no longer regard it as something that is tangible (33-34). We could put all the blame on technology, but we truly can’t do so. Art[ist] existed before our “revealing” of technology (to borrow a term from Heidegger). Art was the first to create an artificial window into nature and imply human as separate from natural (Huws 35). Art has always and will always be a human construct that exists outside of nature and forces nature to exist outside of us. Technology has not created this dilemma, but it has certainly created a stronger sense of separation from the natural. It provides an abundance of distractions to keep us from questioning what is around us. Out of all the things we do question in our contemporary lives, we fail to notice, knowingly or unknowingly, how detrimental technology has been to our sense of comprehension and knowledge. Granted, we have access to an infinite amount of “knowledge” and it is now easier than ever to find out the answer to any question thanks to Wikipedia, but our attention spans are dwindling and we never seem to fully question the cultural constructs that surround us. “Questioning builds a way” (Heidegger 3). We’ve lost ours. Ignorance is the numbing agent of the masses subdued by popular culture and technology. “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology” because technology has perpetuated an unquestioning culture that readily accepts most anything as correct (4). Individuals exist in and are distracted by many mediums as we perpetuate ourselves as digital [by]products. “The merely correct is not yet true” and the “true” is often overlooked and replaced with the surrogate “correct” because we refuse to acknowledge anything that will diminish our level of ignorant bliss (6) To focus on the idea of distractions, I believe that they are the biggest danger created by technology in our personal and public lives. Digital distractions come in many forms: music, movies, photos, Facebook, Twitter, the entire internet. Pretty much everything everywhere is a potential distraction made instantly available through digital means. In and of themselves they are benign, until you add the human compulsion to always consume; however, that compulsion for more is not necessarily the “bad” thing in this assessment. The truly “bad” thing is our lack of questioning. Why do I want more? When is too much way too much? Does the entire internet want to know, or even care, that I just ate a cookie? Do we care that they don’t care? We just blindly accept that what we do digitally is proper and correct because it is what everyone is doing. It is not “true” in the Heidegger sense and we don’t even seem to want to understand, let alone change this fact. In the broadest and simplest sense, we are now the “bewildered herd” and are the ones subjecting ourselves to the status quo, sans bludgeon (Lippmann in Chomsky 16). I would like to now bring attention to the issue of privacy that surrounds contemporary digital technology, or more precisely, the lack thereof. Just think about it: our smartphones and computers contain and have become our entire lives. Phone numbers, email addresses, accounts, photos, everything that makes us (digitally and culturally) who we are all in an object that is no bigger than your hand. We can’t physically or mentally function without our devices. We would (figuratively and digitally) die if we lost all that information or, even worse, someone got a hold of it because of our own carelessness. But that’s exactly what we are: careless. I would prefer to call ourselves oblivious, but let’s give ourselves some benefit of the doubt. We make publicly available more about ourselves through digital avenues than any prominent individual in pre-digital times ever had written about themselves. The biggest argument surrounding this issue of privacy is whether we deliberately relinquish our privacy for the option of existing as a near-complete digital copy or whether we unwittingly let loose all sorts of personal information because we’re attention whores and desperately crave the universe’s attention. I mean, c’mon, maybe all my friends really do want to know that I got up from the keyboard after typing this sentence to use the restroom and I’ll be back soon to continue my assimilation into the digital world with them. My point is that privacy, perceived or real, has been relinquished by us. It wasn’t wrestled out of our hands, although technology made it an easy decision. We gave it up without knowing what we’d really receive in return. We don’t question what we’re losing in order to maintain our digital freedom and because of our ignorance we’ve become what Heidegger defined as “standing-reserve” (17). All of us screen our experiences through some sort of filter, digital or otherwise, that prevents us from understanding the “true.” Maybe we don’t question what we’re not questioning because we’re afraid to realize that everything that is real to us isn’t. Reality has no place in a fully digital world. Try as we might to make the digital a part of our reality, maybe we don’t have a place in a fully digital world.